It is ironic that the federal government is prosecuting crooks like Bernie Madoff for his alleged Ponzi scheme when it is the government who operates the most expensive Ponzi scheme the world has ever seen: social security.

Writes Bill Anderson:While Madoff has managed to mangle at least $50 billion, there is another Ponzi Scheme with trillions in unfunded liability: the U.S. Social Security System. No matter how many times Paul Krugman declares that SS is safe and sound, it is not.

Most people don't realize that SS actually is a "legal" Ponzi scheme, made legal because the government has declared it so. Nonetheless, the principle of SS is that of the chain letter in which people pay in, other receive the benefits, and it works only as long as others are there to pay in more money.

At the beginning, the ratio was about 20 payees to one person receiving benefits, but the numbers have changed to where it now is about 3 and 1. This is an ominous trend, and I suspect that in the end, the government will simply print the money, as it has done in other situations.

So, my recommendation is for Obama to appoint Madoff to head the SS Administration, as he already is experienced in putting together Ponzi payments.

Obviously, it's tragic what happened to these people who lost their life savings to this swindler. But the issue at hand here is the perceived level of protection from the SEC. It creates a false sense of security because investors believe that someone is watching. If the government were not involved with "regulation", do you not think that investors would do a little more research into the company that they are investing billions?

There is a place for government to enforce contracts and prosecute against fraud. But the SEC is a failure the same way the FDIC and FDA are failures.

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Republicans and Democrats are both wrong

There is a very public battle occurring between the ideologues on the left and the right, and each camp has its set of designated talking heads whose sole purpose is to propel its own agenda. It seemingly need not matter that the size and scope of the federal government has been expanding exponentially regardless of who is at the helm.